Tag: Community

Never Say Die: A Chess.com Tournament Experience

On January 5, 2016

In Computer Chess, Fun Stuff, Tournaments

May 24 will mark the second anniversary of my dedicated attempts to improve at chess, but I noticed over the holiday season that I have yet to participate in a time-honored tradition enjoyed by countless chess enthusiasts around the world: a tournament. I have passed on several opportunities to play in local tournaments with the San Antonio Chess Club and playing with that group is the closest I have come to developing a 2016 New Year’s Resolution. Earlier this week I was about to play a 15-minute slow game on Chess.com when I noticed that a tournament for the same time control was starting within 10 minutes. I joined the tournament and spent the next 2 and 1/2 hours playing in my first chess tournament! I was skeptical of the online tournament format but was pleasantly surprised by the energy of the players and the fierceness of the competition. I finished 2nd overall with a 4/5 score. The loss was disappointing but it strengthened my resolve to play through.

I was thrilled to see that many of the games played in this little tournament were exceptional. Games where White or Black was winning with an enormous amount of material and excellent positional play were turned upside down with smart tactics and devastating blunders. It was during the first round as I watched a game in progress where Black was steamrolling his opponent until the chess gods intervened…

Suffice to say that all of the kibitzers in the room were excited about this game and I felt a little nervous knowing that a player like tg-13 was in the mix and able to turn the tables on a dime. I copied down the ID number for the game and stored it in a text file called Never Say Die so that I could come back post-tournament and write this entry. Unfortunately the psychological effect of that game caused more harm than good as I faced tg-13 in the second round and was lured into an early trap, lost my Queen, and the game soon afterwards. The next exceptional game came in the second round.

Black was in control of the game but missing a simple tactic cost him bigtime. It was fun to watch magab001 in his other games because he played some very complicated and nailbiting positions. I had planned not to annotate any of my own games from the tournament but the next game was too good to pass up.

I chose to annotate that game mostly because of 26.Nb6 because it was a high-stakes gamble that paid off in dividends. This was in the third round immediately following my earlier defeat so it helped to boost my confidence and carry me on to the end. The final game I want to show was played near the end of the tournament around the time that my eyelids were growing heavy and the fight for the top three positions had come down to the wire. It features magab001 from the one of the earlier annotated games.

So, what’s the verdict on this tournament and the whole of chess tournaments on the site? I found the Chess.com tournament experience to be much more pleasant than I had expected. The kibitzing with other participants was a lot of fun and it took a lot of the emphasis away from ELOs and put all emphasis on individual performance. A 900 ELO player could defeat a 1200 ELO player and vice versa, so tournaments on Chess.com are an excellent way to wade into the world of competitive chess. Besides, it is free to enter these tournaments and there are even some cool trophies to display on your Chess.com profile page.

Final Tournament Standings

Rank	Player	Rating	Record	Tie
1	TheChessierGuy (16)	1014	5/5	8.5
2	AmishHacker (5)	1151	4/5	7
3	AestheticFit (6)	1134	3/5	4
4	yanakap (17)	965	3/5	3.5
5	magab001 (3)	1126	2/5	1.5
6	ChronoTheCode (10)	1069	1.5/5	0.25

View these games on Chess.com.
- Game #1: tg-13 (1182) vs. JakeBoz98 (1075)
- Game #2: AestheticFit (1144) vs. magab001 (1139)
- Game #3: AmishHacker (1135) vs. yanakap (905)
- Game #4: magab001 (1146) vs. ChronoTheCode (1088)(1088)

Ending on a High Note

By Commander Exorcist

On December 28, 2015

In Personal Reflection

This will be the last post of 2015 on this site. This has been a rollercoaster year for chess around the world and it has also been a wild ride for me as I continue to work on improving my game. 2014 concluded with my online ELO rating sitting at just around 900. This year I am excited to end on a high note sitting at 1100 with a peak rating of 1170 in early December! It is incredible how much work goes into just a few hundred ELO points but the reward of persevering through unnerving losing streaks and perilous blunders is well worth it.

2014finals

2014 was a hard year for me because it was a time of major transition. I moved from Ohio to Texas that year and was still very green when it came to learning the nuances of chess education.

2015finals

2015 was much more rewarding in that I managed to find a rhythm and method that works for studying, analyzing, and integrating my game experiences into future play. Here is the final game I am playing this year so that I can focus on my family during the New Year’s holiday. From the Campfire Chess family to yours, I wish you a very Happy New Year and much joy and chess success! See you in 2016!

Should Tournament Chess Be Faster?

By Commander Exorcist

On December 18, 2015

In FIDE, Tournaments

Chess24 ran a great article yesterday on the organizer of the Zurich Chess Challenge and his desire to speed up the time control for classical chess. I skipped it when it first appeared in my Feedly list, but I came back to it after some thought about how long professional chess tournaments actually last. Regularly I have tuned in to matches and left Chessbase up on the computer while doing a myriad of other tasks. Imagine my surprise when I take my family out to eat, visit the mall, and then come home to find the same game still in progress! People are naturally resistant to change so it is not surprising that not much traction has been made in efforts to change classical time controls.

For the 2016 edition of the Zurich Chess Challenge, the players will utilize a 40-minute control per player with 10 second increments per move. According to the article, FIDE has not responded to the organizer’s proposal to change the time control definition for classical chess, but I would imagine that with sanctions against their president are most likely a priority right now.

Read the full article on Chess24.

Winding Down the Year

By Commander Exorcist

On December 13, 2015

In Blog Updates

Attention, campers! This is your Camp Director speaking! Christmas is right around the corner and that means worship, family fun, personal reflection, and more sweet treats than most people can handle. My family and I take Christmas very seriously and do what we can to enjoy it to the fullest. We celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and ensure that we spend as much time as possible with each other. Additionally, I am preparing to start the final three classes for my Masters of Divinity program at Liberty University! With these things in mind, regular posts will start winding down effective today. I have programmed a post for Christmas and New Year’s Day, but regular postings will be few and far between until 2016 rolls around.

Please accept my sincerest gratitude for the continued love and support of this website over the last year and a half. I remain hopefully optimistic about the future of Campfire Chess and the prospect of a long future with this website, my local chess group, and the growing popularity of chess around the world. May the grace and love of Jesus Christ bless you and your family this holiday season!

Sincerely, Wesley Surber

Kirsan Illyumzhinov Sanctioned by the United States

By Commander Exorcist

On November 26, 2015

In FIDE, US Chess

You might have already read this story making waves across the online chess community, but its potential effects on international chess warrant another mention. The United States Department of the Treasury has slapped sanctions on Kirsan Illyumzhinov because of his continued support of oppressive regimes like those in Syria and the former governments of Iraq and Libya. Kirsan’s eccentric political connections are well known and often despised within the chess community, but these sanctions come primarily because of his connections to the government of Syria. American intelligence has linked Syrian government assets to support of the terrorist group known as ISIS. These sanctions come at a difficult time for Illyumzhinov and the World Chess Federation as the organization is actively searching for a US-based venue for the 2016 World Chess Championship.

For an in-depth exposé into the developing story along with the official response from Kirsan himself, check out this article on Chessbase.

Chess Players Lose at Social Media

By Commander Exorcist

On November 12, 2015

In Community, Personal Reflection

Imagine for a moment the social stereotype of the typical chess player. Is it the image of an old white guy sitting alone in his house hunched over a chessboard with stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books around him? Perhaps he is disheveled and could use a refresher on how to use the shower? Bobby Fischer did not own a computer so this guy does not have one either. This creepy stereotype continues to persist in the mainstream media, but is there any truth to it?

A recent article on World Chess took players and fans to task for not embracing social media like other sports. The article’s title warns of things to come: Chess Players are Surprisingly Bad with Social Media. There is nothing surprising about this to chess players, fans, and the community as a whole. The author insists that professional players have not harnessed the power of social media marketing tools to boost their popularity and popularity of the sport. The whole argument assumes that chess audiences are ready to embrace social media marketing on a wide scale. History proves that this is not the case with chess.

An example brought up in the article uses the always fun and engaging WCM Claudia Munoz. The author focuses on Claudia’s 19,000+ Tweets relative to her 3,000 followers and implies that her inability to reach more people is due to a lack of cooperation from other chess masters. I would argue that it has less to do with the quality of personality or the collaborative efforts of different chess masters and more to do with the nature of chess itself. Chess is a game that has transcended the board and is readily available online. Chess players meet to play chess, not to share their favorite cat videos with each other. Quite often the focus of obsession for chess fans is not the personality or the player, but the quality of their game. There is no social media requirement to obtain PGN files of games, so the community as a whole lacks the need to be social.

I am more social than your average chess player because I run a chess blog and because I am a (way) less than average chess player. I enjoy the social elements of chess because I am interested in personality and how a player’s personality affects their style. The world’s greatest chess players have made serious efforts to improve their social media presence but the chess audience is not reciprocating. I wish that chess players as a whole were more social but chess is not an inherently social game. It is a strategic battle between two people who are not required to be friends to play. Yet, I think that Claudia Munoz and players like her are a ray of hope for a future where that mentality changes and the community is transformed.

Read the full article on WorldChess.com.

Give the Gift of Chess 2015

By Commander Exorcist

On October 10, 2015

In Community

As the leaves start to change color and Summer gives way to Fall the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) has kicked into high gear. If you are not familiar with CFC it is the United States Government’s yearly drive to raise money for charities and nonprofit organizations around the country. CFC’s intention is to provide an easy way for employees and families of the multitude of federal agencies to contribute funds in support of their favorite causes in a fast, easy, and safe way. Last year I wrote about CFC and advertised my support for the US Chess Trust. This year I want to expand on that offering by not only emphasizing chess organizations that are open through CFC but also some of the nonprofits around the country that you can help to bring chess to people around the nation!

Combined Federal Campaign

United States Chess Trust: In some ways the US Chess Trust could be seen as a hybrid of US Chess and Chess in the Schools. The mission of the US Chess Trust is to promote scholastic chess activities and to support charity activities conducted by US Chess and other organizations. Like the US Chess Federation, the US Chess Trust is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and can receive donations through CFC using code 10212 or by clicking here to make a non-CFC contribution..

Other Organizations

US Chess Federation: Recently the US Chess Federation (formerly USCF) completed its application process and transition to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. US Chess is the official governing body for chess in the United States. By supporting US Chess benefactors enable it to provide oversight, tournaments, and growth opportunities in life through chess across the United States. For donation information click here.
Chess in the Schools: There are many scholastic chess programs around the country, but Chess in the Schools is one of the largest and most influential. Operating largely within the inner city schools of New York Chess in the Schools has almost single-handedly produced a new generation of chess players from a rich and diverse cultural and national background. For donation information click here.

Honorable Mention

The Week in Chess: This is one of those things that does not fall into the realm of charitable organization but its influence and effect has such a positive impact on the world of digital chess and information sharing that I think it is worth mentioning. Most online chess fans know of Mark Crowther and the long-running website The Week in Chess. Until a couple of years ago Mark’s work was supported by the a major chess organization out of the UK. However, that partnership has ended and the site now runs purely on donations. For information on how you can help contribute to its operations and receive a copy of Mark’s Chessbase archive with every TWIC issue click here.